While the West has been well-acquainted with cinema of East
Asia, Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean and Japanese films, Southeast Asian cinema
remains exotic on the film palette, with many film watchers going for a peek
into the country’s culture and psyche as much as going for the sake of watching
a good piece of cinema. Thanks to the likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who
won the Palme D’or, Anthony Chen who won the Camera D’or and other award sweeps
by filmmakers from the Southeast Asian region, people are speculating about the
possibility of a cinematic ‘new wave’ from this part of the world.

This is probably the starting point of Leonardo Cinieri
Lombroso’s investigative journey into the films of Southeast Asia and possibly
the greater social psyche that have shaped these films. Leonardo has cleanly
defined the boundaries of his documentary by choosing to focus on only 1
filmmaker from each of the four countries he considers to have left sizeable
footprints in the film festival circuit. As a result the world in each of the
four countries is defined through the sometimes coloured lenses of the chosen
filmmaker’s eyes.

Brillante Mendoza offers his raw, gritty glare at social
tension in the Philippines. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, minus his earlier more earthy,
localized films like ‘Monrak Transistor’ or ‘Fun Bar Karaoke’, offers a more
esoteric and isolated view of Thailand in his post-‘Last Life of the Universe’
filmography. Eric Khoo offers his all-too-familiar fascination with underdog
and the underbelly of society from ‘Mee Pok Man’ to ‘My Magic’. Lastly Garin
Nugroho, despite defined by his strong ‘installation-art’ in his works like ‘Opera
Jawa’, explains the political undertones in his works beneath all the ‘wayang’.

Almost like a glimpse into the ‘workshops’ of the Southeast
Asian award winning works, the filmmakers share about their respective environments
that shape them and how they go about capturing the essence of their societies.
Among the 4 filmmakers, Singapore stands in stark contrast to the visual
potpourri that is the other 3 cities, mainly due to landscape, captured on
screen, that looks regimented and barren. This is largely attributable to
Leonardo’s multiple shots of tightly arranged HDB flats, some even with Eric
Khoo walking through them. A sense of order and quietness pervades the scenes
and even Eric Khoo himself sits in an abandoned coffeeshop telling us about his
fascination with HDB flats that germinated the idea behind ’12 Storeys’. On
deeper thought, this seemed like the Singapore ’12 Storeys’ inhabited, a little
lost in time, maybe 10 years behind.

Eric Khoo

Of course, Leonardo explained during the Q&A that his
film was essentially offering a set of 4 windows into 4 societies, through 4
individuals, and may not represent the greater filmmaking attitudes and
perspectives of the communities at large. This also brings to light the fact
that making a documentary like this essentially faces the problem of coverage.
The subject matter perhaps warrants a 4 part series that would do enough
justice what each country has to offer.

Back to the HDB shots in Singapore. These almost
‘homage-style’ shots by Leonardo, often blurred the lines between footages from
the filmmakers’ actual films and the documentary itself.Even in the other cities, establishing shots
of the bustling streets or rustic kampongs blend seamlessly into the actual
dramatic footages from the films. Leonardo also displayed a strong meticulous
hand in editing from the way he transitions between ‘fiction’ and fact and between
countries. Undeniably, this act of mimicry lifts this documentary above the
arms-length style of most TV documentaries and reflects the respect the
filmmaker has for his subjects. Bringing back an earlier question, can we see a
Southeast Asian new wave from the documentary? Ironically I think not, though
it demonstrates that within each country, there are people who see stories that
others can’t and want to share these with the rest of the world.